Cameron’s
hindquarters
Last
month Tory leader David Cameron was in Manchester. His speech-writer
reminded him of that city’s past associations:
“Manchester
became great in the 19th century when the words
‘Manchester liberalism’ stood for free trade and capitalism. And
of course the city inspired another idea – Friedrich Engels lived
here for many years and he wrote about the dark side of the
industrial revolution”.
Cameron
was there to launch what some might regard as a contradiction in
terms: the Conservative Co-operative Movement. After saying he
thought it was a shame that the co-op movement had been associated
with the political left, he explained:
"there
have always been people on the centre-right concerned about the
effects of capitalism on the social fabric. Men like Carlyle and
Disraeli, following the tradition of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith
himself, who recognised at the outset of the industrial revolution
that profit was not the only organising principle of a healthy
society" (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7084865.stm).
He
also repudiated one of Thatcher’s most notorious sayings by
admitting that “there is such a thing as society – it's just not
the same thing as the state".
The
free-marketers at the Adam Smith Institute must be cringing and "to
the right of Genghis Khan" might be a more accurate description
of the views of Thomas Carlyle than "centre right".
Carlyle
(who invented the term "the cash nexus" to describe how
capitalism was reducing the relations between people to money ones)
and Disraeli (who wrote a novel about there being "two nations"
in England) were prominent members in the 1840s of a group of Tories
who called themselves "Young England". Engels did not just
write about the dark side of the industrial revolution. He also wrote
about “Young England”, in the Communist Manifesto he
drafted with Marx:
"Owing
to their historical position, it became the vocation of the
aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern
bourgeois society. . .In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy
were obliged to lose sight, apparently, of their own interests, and
to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest
of the exploited working class alone. Thus the aristocracy took their
revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in
his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe. . . The
aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the
proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often
as it joined them, saw
on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with
loud and irreverent laughter. One section of the French Legitimists
and 'Young England' exhibited this spectacle".
No
doubt, as a Tory Toff who went to Eton, there will be a feudal coat
of arms somewhere on Cameron's hindquarters, but much more
prominently displayed will be the words "Opportunist
Professional Politician" – which workers should equally greet
with loud and irreverent laughter.